On The Skripal Poisoning Case And The Questions It Leaves Unanswered

On The Skripal Poisoning Case And The Questions It Leaves Unanswered

As the Skripal poisoning saga, and the questions arising from it, have emerged gradually over the past three months, this article will begin with a timeline showing the evolution of the Skripal poisoning story before analyzing the conflicting claims at the core of the narrative. This writer will provide commentary on the overall incident and its place in the manufacturing of diffuse, widespread anti-Russian hysteria.

Timeline

March 2018

3rd

Yulia Skripal, a Russian citizen from Moscow (and the daughter of Sergei Skripal), travels to visit Sergei at his Salisbury UK home, arriving at Heathrow airport at 2:40pm.

4th

The Skripals are found unconscious on a bench and admitted to Salisbury Hospital.

Theresa May tells the House of Commons that a nerve agent used to poison the Skripals was of a type developed by Russia and that the government had concluded it “highly likely” that Russia was responsible for the poisoning.

Media report the incident as a poisoning using an agent of Russian origin. Sarah Huckabee Sanders condemns the attack and expresses support on behalf of the White House, while France’s Emmanuel Macron is contacted, condemns the attack and offers support. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also issues a statement saying he had “full confidence in the UK’s investigation and its assessment that Russia was likely responsible for the nerve agent attack”.

Theresa May tells MPs that the UK would expel 23 Russian diplomats in response to the Skripal incident, declaring it to be an: “unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the UK.” The Russian Embassy responds, stating that the expulsion is “unacceptable, unjustified and shortsighted.”

Britain asks the international chemical weapons watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, (OPCW) to verify its findings.

Former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, publishes an article titled “The Novichok Story Is Indeed Another Iraqi WMD Scam,” which discredits the notion that a Novichok agent would inherently come from Russia. Murray revealed that the Novichok program was actually invented in Uzbekistan and was inherited by America rather than Russia. Murray also relates that the method of production for Novichoks was published 20 years ago and that the UK won’t have a sample to be able to test for the origin (through impurities, etc).

A second DMSA (D-Notice) is issued to press, once again forbidding reporting in the UK on the Skripal incident.

15th

Craig Murray posts another article, this time highlighting efforts to target him on social media. Murray discusses the manner in which a troll had strategically tweeted so as to create a barrage of condescending bluster and information that, in part, appears as though it came from Wikipedia, but doesn’t actually counter the key assertions made by Murray.

Following a telephone call between French President Emmanuel Macron and the UK’s Theresa May, France backs the UK’s conclusion that Russia was behind the Skripal incident. Leaders of Britain, the US, Germany and France issue a joint statement blaming Russia for the Salisbury poison attack. The four allies urge Moscow to provide “full and complete disclosure” of its Novichok nerve agent program to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

It is reported that UK Defense Secretary (and child appointed to a position of inappropriate responsibility), Gavin Williamson’s response to Russia’s protestations is: “Go Away and Shut up”

“OPCW inspectors have had full access to all known Russian chemical weapons facilities for over a decade – including those identified by the “Novichok” alleged whistleblower Mirzayanov – and last year OPCW inspectors completed the destruction of the last of 40,000 tonnes of Russian chemical weapons. By contrast, the programme of destruction of US chemical weapons stocks still has five years to run”.

Murray also points out that, in contrast, Israel signed on to the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993 but refused to ratify as it would mean inspection and destruction of their chemical weapons.

Russia’s Lavrov goes public regarding Spiez Lab findings, citing their report he explains that Spiez Lab, in one of the samples tested, found elements indicating the presence of a substance used by US, UK and NATO allies (BZ Toxin), a substance Lavrov says Russia does not produce. He also points out that the purity of the sample of the A-234 Novichok agent was so high that it should have easily killed Skripal.

15th

Spiez Lab defers all inquiries to the OPCW.

18th

Spiez Lab tweets statement of Switzerland that rebukes Lavrov’s wording (for not being in keeping with the report) but not the fundamental claims that were made.

“But at a meeting of the OPCW executive in The Hague, the Russian claim was refuted by OPCW officials, who said explained that BZ had been used in the control sample, not the sample itself. It is also a breach of OPCW procedures to identify a laboratory involved in a test.”

22nd

A story emerges, suggesting the attack may have been carried out by a former FSB officer, an assertion based on allegations made by Boris Karpichkov. Karpichkov claims to be on the same FSB ‘hit list’ as the Skripals, a list we are asked to accept blindly, with no evidence provided to support its existence.

May 2018

14th

The Guardian reports that Skripal had actually been active and giving briefings to European intelligence services in recent years, as recently as 2016:

“It seems that MI6 approved of and facilitated these trips. In June 2016 Skripal travelled to Estonia and met a select group of intelligence officers there”

“The German media report said the BND had informed the U.S. and British intelligence agencies about the case following the analysis, and small amounts of the poison were later produced in several NATO member states to test Western protective gear, testing equipment and antidotes”.

17th

The Independent reports that Germany had a sample of a Novichok agent back in the 1990s.

18th

Sergei Skripal discharged from hospital.

23rd

Yulia Skripal makes a public statement, in which she expresses a desire to return to Russia. The Mirror article reporting her sentiments also explains that her cousin, Viktoria, has been refused entry to meet with Yulia twice by the British government.

We’ve also heard repeatedly how the nerve agent was “of a type developed by Russia”, a strange choice of phrase that Craig Murray pointed out when seeing it repeatedly used by both politicians and media, and that, when properly considered, serves propagandist purposes more than anything else. A phrase Murray succinctly asserts is “of a type developed by liars“.

The purity of the samples that were analyzed has become the subject of serious contention, and there are other conflicting stories about Novichok too, with the version depending on which former Soviet scientist you ask.

On the other side, there’s Leonid Rink, a Russian scientist that claims he was involved in the Novichok program and that has claimed Mirzayanov was one of approximately 5 people to have left the Soviet Union with knowledge of Novichok production methods.

“The TAV team notes that the toxic chemical was of high purity. The latter is concluded from the almost complete absence of impurities.”

Due to Novichok’s decomposition in the body, the blood samples should not have contained the substance in such high purity – unless the victims had been injected with it shortly before the blood samples were taken.

Mirzayanov even states: “This substance under these conditions could only be used by an idiot who knows nothing about the chemical properties of the ‘Novice.’” (“Novice” being a reference to Novichok).

One theme seems consistent throughout the Skripal debacle – what we see and hear in relation to controversial topics in the media depends just as much on those doing the narrative gatekeeping, as it does on those who actually serve as a source.

If, as is alleged, the unknown couple approached the Skripals in the park where they were found unconscious, there should have been more CCTV footage available to prove the theory. Instead, the only footage that was released was that recorded by Snap Fitness. Other CCTV cameras were present in Market Walk as well as covering both of the entrances/exits either side. In other words, the big red bag the woman was carrying should have stood out considerably in multiple pieces of surveillance footage.

A CCTV footage frame from Snap Fitness is in the green box, CCTV cameras are in the red boxes, the direction the couple were walking is indicated with the blue arrow.

The residential area in Salisbury where Col. Skripal lived had far less CCTV coverage, however, this may not matter because, if the Skripals were poisoned via absorption of the substance through the skin at their property, them being incapacitated hours later should have been somewhat staggered. The fact that they both became incapacitated at the same time suggests they were poisoned closer to the time they were discovered.

But What About Fentanyl Poisoning?

You may have heard that the Skripals were poisoned by fentanyl, an opioid “10,000 times stronger than heroin” and that this has been covered up.

As an example, some have pointed to articles being altered. For example, there was one in Clinical Services Journal, published on March 5th, that was altered between April 26, 2018 and the April 28, 2018 to remove the reference to Fentanyl (the April 28th 2018 version of the article had the reference to fentanyl removed without a correction notice but a notice has been added since then).

The reality is that it’s entirely possible that a mistake could have been made in initially diagnosing the cause: however, questions do still remain, especially when statements from NHS consultants at the hospital contradict the nerve agent claim, such as consultant Stephen Davies from Salisbury District hospital who wrote to the Times following an article they’d published on March 14, 2018 in which he explicitly states, contrary to their reporting, that no patients had the symptoms of nerve agent poisoning:

D(SMA) Notices & Conspiracy Theories

For those outside the UK, the D(SMA) or D-Notice refers to a press suppression tool used by the UK government since just prior to the first World War. British media has described the D-notice as: “[A] collaboration between state and media [that] has offered a compromise between national security and press freedom – yet sometimes has been tested to the limit.” The UK government relates the following definition of the press suppression tool:

“The DSMA-Notice System is a means of providing advice and guidance to the media about defence and security information, the publication of which would be damaging to national security. The system is voluntary, it has no legal authority and the final responsibility for deciding whether or not to publish rests solely with the editor or publisher concerned.”

At present, though, there doesn’t appear to be any solid proof for either premise.

So where does this leave us?

We have been told that Russia, in a clandestine operation against one or both of the Skripals, used a nerve agent with a very Russian sounding name, alleged to be 5-8 times as deadly as VX, on a door handle at the Skripal home in a botched assassination attempt.

We have been told that Porton Down confirmed this by Britain’s foreign secretary only for him to be directly contradicted by the source. We’ve seen diplomats expelled over unsubstantiated allegations, observed politicians and reporters pretend that Nukus never existed and avoided mentioning that the Novichok program was inherited by the US, instead referring to the program as belonging to the Soviet Union (emphasizing that this preceded Russia so that it appears Russia inherited the program).

We have seen that the OPCW analyzed laboratory grade A-234, an unlikely result for Novichok components combined in-the-field a full 18 days before the samples were even taken. In addition, Prime minister Theresa May, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Porton Down’s Gary Aitkenhead have wrongly told us that the A-234 was “military-grade.” If the samples lacked impurities, then it follows that they lacked additives used to ensure the successful application of the toxin that is typical in “military-grade” substances.

We’ve seen Theresa May seeking to invoke NATO article 5, but yet, in stunning contrast, we have seen 3 months go by with the only footage of any suspects being a few frames from a private company’s CCTV recording. There has been no other footage, no photos, artists sketches, detailed descriptions of suspects or information about the suspects movements before or after the incident and there has been no reward for information offered.

Of course, the mainstream media have not helped matters. They have, with few exceptions, obediently regurgitated every lie, every deflection, have been mute in the face of contradiction, and have acted as government-toadying cheerleaders throughout this saga, even echoing the posturing and sabre-rattling of Britain’s prime minister and foreign secretary.

Considering the fact that both Rink and Mirzayanov have stated that the substance would have started decomposition by the time samples were acquired, it seems as though Porton Down may have provided OPCW with Novichok samples developed in a laboratory rather than a substance genuinely acquired 18 days after the components had been combined.

Of course, this conclusion may seem outlandish, but, when the opinions of Novichok experts and the OPCW analysis results are considered, it’s the only reasonable conclusion we seem to be left with that explains the purity of the samples.

Overall critical questions on the reality of the Skripal incident remain unanswered, joining multiple other legacy press obsessions which blame the Russian state for an attack on a Western Nation while ignoring serious factual contradictions underpinning the core of each narrative, including the ‘Russian hacking,’ and ‘Russiagate’ or Trump-Russia collusion sagas. It is important to remember this over-arching context when skeptically considering the contradictions, flat-out deception, manipulation, and glaring omissions that characterize the press and UK government’s reaction to the Skripal incident.

Further Reading

I have tried to make this article serve as a brief up-to-date summary of the convoluted and ongoing Skripal case, however, this topic is complex and there are more facts to know and inconsistencies to be aware of. There are two additional sites I’ve found to be particularly informative on this subject:

Former UK Ambassador Craig Murray’s blog has also been a goldmine for accurate information. Murray’s ability to call out the British government’s disinformation and demonstrate himself to be thoroughly knowledgeable and reliable on this topic – especially in light of his experience in Uzbekistan, has been very impressive.

Correction (June 14, 2018)

Theresa may did not directly invoke article 5, she merely sought to. The article has been corrected to reflect this.